Tivoli Directory Integrator (TDI), also referred to as ‘Blue
Glue’ is an easy to use integration tool that can integrate various IBM
products. It can be used to integrate different IBM products for critical scenarios
that provide value-add to businesses that want to leverage the capabilities of
their product portfolio.

TDI can be a
very, useful, handy and effective tool for identity management functions. It
can be used to:

Provide batch and real-time synchronization between identity data sources so that enterprises can establish and up-do-date identity data infrastructure

Synchronize all instances of identity data and other data across enterprise to the authoritative source, which increases accuracy and decreases administrative costs. The synchronization can be done in real time to ensure data integrity and effectively meet compliance and governance requirements

A specific example of TDI being used with IBM Tivoli
Identity Manager (ITIM) is for the development of ITIM adapters. ITIM adapters
are software components that facilitate communication between the ITIM server
and a managed resource like Tivoli Directory Server etc. These adapters can be
developed utilizing the wide range of connectors provided by TDI. See ITIM Adapter Architecture diagram below:

TDI can also
be used to aid with specific administration tasks with ITIM. ITIM has both LDAP
and database data stores containing useful data and TDI has connectors for
these resources. For example using specific connectors we can query simple things like orphan accounts
direct from the LDAP data store and get real time information and not the stale
data provided by the ITIM built in reporting tools, which requires a time
consuming data synchronization to move the data from LDAP to DB2 database
tables. It can also be used to identify dis-allowed accounts as well as to
identify reconciliation failures.

As indicated
above, TDI is a very nifty tool that can be used for performing many tasks with
IBM Identity and Access Management (IAM) products. TDI is bundled with Tivoli
Identity Manager, Tivoli Access Manager , Tivoli Directory Server and other IAM
products.